It’s back to school time- I can hardly believe it! We had a great summer, but I am really looking forward to getting back into a productive routine after Labor Day.

One of my sincere goals for myself this fall is to “finish” our Houston home. I feel a little ashamed of myself that there is so much still unattended to when we have lived here for three years now! AND we renovated the house for over a year before that. But here we are.

To be fair: some of the rooms on the to-do list are those that needed to evolve into themselves to best serve our family life, and now having had a few years getting the flow of the house down I am happy I waited to do things right.

To be honest: the rest of the things on the to-do list are just a shining example of my ADD and frequent tendency to not finish things that I start.

Mudroom / Breakfast Room / Dishroom

Most of our family traffic comes in and out of the back door off of our mudroom, and circulates through the breakfast room, kitchen, and dishroom that surround our family room. You can get some sense of the flow in this post I did on the breakfast room before & after.

Not too bad, but minimal pretty and zero organization to manage the flow of items that come in and out of our house. You can usually trace the path of human traffic through the literal paper trail that leads from the back door, to the breakfast table, and into the woefully under-fluffed “Mom Station.

I think some wallpaper, curtains, and a few ‘cessories in the mudroom would help me be less bothered by the occasional pile up of stuff that occurs. Curtains in the breakfast room would help define the space and hopefully get it some of the respect it deserves. Then our dishroom/momstation needs to get its act together with some filing and storage systems. 

Playroom/Family Room

I have done the absolute bare-minimum in our downstairs playroom/family room since we moved in. Literally the only thoughtful decorative “touch” I brought to the space was using a magnetic paint in the brightest yellow you can imagine because I felt like if the walls screamed FUNFUNFUNFUNFUNFUNFUN in your face, and the kids could slap some magnets on them, that was probably good enough for now. 

We furnished the room with various pieces from our old house, and the kids had free reign which kept the mess out of the more formal spaces. However, we spent a lot of our time in there and it was pretty uncomfortable with only an old, slightly broken couch and a child-size eames chair for seating.

After Harry transitioned to his “big boy room”- we moved some of the toys upstairs to the old nursery and began turning the downstairs playroom into more of a family room/kids study. 

Over the summer we painted the walls the same soft blue from the ceiling in the breakfast room and it immediately immediately improved the rooms quality of life. I hung some curtain panels I had in storage while we wait for the real ones, and installed desks where the shelves used to be in the windows. New seating, storage, and some decorative touches and this will be a whole new world. 

The rest of it…

• Library/Study: I posted about our plans in the library/study a few months ago- and while progress has been slooowww I have mostly finished what I set out to do- just need a few finishing touches now. For the library: recover cane chairs, paint coffee table, possibly add a sofa console table and accessories. 
• Study: I really just need to get in there and organize everything to get it functional as a family office and take some pressure off of the mom-desk in the dish room.
• Master Bedroom: Another one I posted about here, we have new side tables and our reupholstered bed came in last week, now I am just deciding on a bedding refresh and possibly moving some art around.
• Kitchen: I always meant to back the glass doors on the cabinet piece on there with a fabric or wallpaper to hide the raw functionality happening inside, so that needs to happen, as well as an overall kitchen purge/organizing session. 
• Light Fixtures: There are too many of these to count. Just raw bulbs scattered around the ceilings of our house like easter eggs reminding me of my shame.

There is more to be done throughout the house, but it would be redundant for y’all if I kept listing out the recurring theme here of CLEAN OUT and ORGANIZE. It’s a little overwhelming for me but I am going to channel the spirit of Marie Kondo and get it done. Wish me luck, I’ll be back with updates.